


You've Got To Be More Careful.

by amorremanet



Series: Skeptical and Steadfast. [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5 Acts Meme, Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Canon, Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Canon, Episode: s04e01 Lazarus Rising, Episode: s04e02 Are You There God? It's Me Dean Winchester, Episode: s04e04 Metamorphosis, Episode: s04e05 Monster Movie, F/F, Grace Sharing, Hurt/Comfort, Sharing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-19
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-03 23:49:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorremanet/pseuds/amorremanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just your typical, everyday love story between a great thief who's recently been raised from Hell and dragged into some jacked up, Apocalyptic nonsense, and the nerdy, redheaded angel who can't stay out of her charge's personal space. …No, really. That's it. It's hardly even a love story, thank you very much, and may angels have mercy on you if you say otherwise, because Bela Talbot won't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You've Got To Be More Careful.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ilfirin_estel](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ilfirin_estel).



Bela blinks at the leggy, blue-eyed, ginger girl now standing opposite her, the one who just stormed through the barn door, sparks flying all around her, and told Bela, _I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition_.  
  
She glances down to where Ellie's sprawled on the floor, not moving—and she only looks back up when Ruby's knife clatters to the ground. Ginger says that they need to talk, her and Bela. _Alone_ —and Bela fails to distract herself with the thought that Ginger's pointy, heart-shaped face would probably be pretty if she'd blink more often. Or exhibit an understanding of facial expressions.  
  
Or do something, _anything_ , other than stare at Bela like Ginger can see every nook and cranny of her soul— _No offense meant_ , Bela wants to tell her, but keeps quiet. _I'm sure you're lovely for cocktail parties and you no doubt make a wonderful cherry pie—but I'm going to need you to look somewhere other than my soul. There's a reason why people don't go around sharing those things._  
  
"Who are you?" Bela snaps, forcing herself to glare at Ginger, not to flinch when Ginger doesn't even react, beyond saying that her name is Anael. "Yes, Darling, I inferred that based on how Ellie's ritual required us to use the name that Pamela ascertained—commendable work on her eyes, by the way, but she's going to live, last I heard—what I meant to ask is: _what_ are you?"  
  
"I'm an angel of the Lord," she says, as though this is self-evident fact and doesn't make her sound like a lunatic. Anael sighs when Bela tries to question this, and shoots her a _Look_ —at first, it doesn't seem different from the same expression she's had since getting here, but one quirk of Anael's eyebrows makes Bela feel like her insides have all flash-frozen. "I warned the psychic not to spy on my true form—an angel's _true_ visage can be… overwhelming to humans… I didn't know how overwhelming, but the onus here is still on her for failing to heed my advice."  
  
"Well, speaking strictly for me, _Anael_ …" Bela drawls the name as though it's poison, smirks when she finally manages to make the so-called 'angel'… sort of flinch. The brow-furrowing, head-tilting kicked kitten face might as well be flinching, given Anael's ineptitude with facial expressions. "As far as my opinion counts, I don't _blame_ Pamela for not listening to you—after all, there's one very simple truth of the universe, one that even a thief like me knows: _demons lie_."  
  
The furrow in Anael's brow deepens. She wrinkles her nose to go with it. Really, she'd look just perfect if she started batting at a piece of string, wearing a bow around her neck. For a moment, she says nothing, just rolls her shoulders, straightens up and closes her eyes, leans her head back and exposes full length of her alabaster neck—light flashes through the barn. Thunder rolls and crashes again. Against the back wall, a shadow flickers, holding just long enough for Bela to make out an expansive set of wings—and just as quickly as the whole display started, it dies down. Anael raises her eyebrows. Gets the expectant quirk of a smile teasing at her lips.  
  
"I'm not a demon, Bela," she says, and it occurs to Bela that her voice has a musical lilt to it. Like she's been classically trained. "I already told you: I'm an angel of the Lord. I've taken a vessel so that I may walk among you people for the first time in centuries—many of my brothers and sisters are doing the same."  
  
Whatever pretty words Anael has for it, that sounds like one thing and one thing only, from where Bela's standing: _possession_. It's a pretty convenient excuse to derail this conversation and point out that this "angel" hasn't helped her own case yet—but there's something more pressing on Bela's mind as Anael steps toward her, edging into her personal space—and as she backs up, she huffs, "If you're some hotshot angel, then you serve God, right? God as in, 'capital-G, Him that is called I Am, death to the firstborn, voice from the whirlwind, knocked up a virgin and all the other greatest hits' _God_ , right?"  
  
Anael pauses in her advance, if only to nod and say that of course she serves God. "…Isn't that what humans usually infer, when someone says, 'the Lord'?" she asks, looking so earnestly confused that Bela actually wants to believe her, for a moment. Anael blinks, and asks again: "That _is_ still the accepted terminology, right? I haven't… My dealings with humanity have been distant and predominantly intangible since my assignment with Catherine of Siena…"  
  
So, the likeliest explanation for this? Bela's dealing with an exceptionally deluded demon who knows her Catholic saints. _Great_. Just fantastic—she never thought she'd actually _want_ to know what's going on with Meg, but at the moment, she'd rather deal with Azazel's smarmy little princess than with Anael—or whatever her real name is—who soon resumes getting close to Bela and doesn't stop until there's hardly room for breath between their bodies. Glaring down at her proves difficult, if mostly because Anael squints at Bela, and tilts her head, and looks for all the world like a scientist who can't understand the anomalous results in front of her.  
  
She'd make a perfect objective bystander, too. A wonderful devotee of logic, of reason, and of the scientific method—save for one thing: the glimmer that flashes across her eyes like a flashlight over gemstones, and that vaguely resembles— _what is that?_ —sympathy. Or maybe concern. Whatever it is, it seems to ask, _what's the matter? You don't think you deserve to be saved?_  
  
But Bela presses on in asking: "If you're such an angel? If you _really_ serve God? Then why would you bother saving me from Hell? In case you missed the memo: between my Deal, the petty theft, the coveting, attempted murders, lying, cheating, and myriad sexual transgressions, I'm fairly certain that I _deserved_ to be there. I believe that constitutes _fairness_ , not to mention righteousness—and angels _are_ meant to be righteous, aren't you?"  
  
Anael sighs. Hunches her shoulders like a wolf and, in a low, growling voice, says: "Because _God commanded it_ , Bela. Because we have work for you."  
  
  
Some work it turns out to be—the first instance doesn't even come with a Divine Commission attached. Ghosts just show up out of nowhere—ghosts of people whom hunters and other clued-in people couldn't save—and start killing people. Like the people who let them die. A collaborative session with Bobby Singer—a desperate act of bringing his library and Ellie's together to try and parse out whether or not Anael's a _real_ angel—ends with their whole study party hunkered down in the panic room that Bobby decided to build in his basement, one weekend.  
  
And as she glares at the poster of Bo Derek hanging on the wall, lets Freya nose against her hand and flop across her lap, Bela can't help wondering where God gets off with all of this rubbish—gets off justifying all the innocent people who have died because of the demons and the monsters and all of other incarnations of evil that crop up on this _good green earth_. Already today, Ava's had to save Bobby from the ghost of his late wife. Bela's had to put a rocksalt round through Henriksen's head so he'd stop choking Ava.  
  
Ava winds up getting choked twice more before they got downstairs—first, by Nancy, the virgin secretary and the would-be sacrifice; and then by Lily, the blonde girl from San Francisco and Cold Oak, South Dakota, who tackled Ava to the ground, screaming about how was it anything like fair that _Ava_ got to live when Lily, Andy, Jake, and all the others just stayed dead. Apparently (or so Bobby tells them, once they've locked the panic room door), this is called the Rising of the Witnesses and it has something to do with the Apocalypse, with the coming Armageddon.  
  
Bela laughs, bitterly, and says this is just _hilarious_ , mostly on the grounds that there can hardly be an enormous, climactic battle when Team Hell has everything at their disposal—an army of demons (not to mention a Navy, an Air Force, a militia, and Her Majesty's Secret Service, on top of all that); prophecies guiding them in trying to raise Lucifer from the Cage he got smote into (according to what Bela hopes are just myths, for all she's certain that they're probably not); and, naturally, Lilith up at the head of the pack, leading all of the peppy little demons in their peppy, infernal renditions of charming little demon Sunday school hymns, set to the tune of slaughter and brimstone.  
  
To Ava's consternation, Bela suggests: _"Satan loves me, this I know, because they took me off the rack and told me so…"_  
  
Narrowing her eyes at Bela's shoulder, at the angry red handprint that Anael left behind, Ava says, "So… do you want to get to the point, or is this just gonna be… 'see Bela, see Bela get frustrated and need to vent; vent, Bela, vent' time? Because it's not like I'm opposed to listening to you vent or share your feelings or anything like that, Honey, because I'm really, really not, but… we do kind of have some super-pissed off ghosts to deal with upstairs. So, maybe we could try getting to the point? If that's okay with you?"  
  
"All I'm trying to say is that… yes. I've read the Book of Job, and yes, I know that I have no right to question the Alpha and the Omega," Bela says with a huff, shaking out her hair and shepherding it into a ponytail. Down in her lap, Freya makes a mewling noise at the moment of getting jostled as Bela shifts around, and happy as she is that Ava kept her cat alive, Bela doesn't have the patience for any entitlement right now.  
  
"But this sort of thing," she goes on, "is exactly why I'm having trouble with the, 'I'm an angel of the Lord' nonsense. If there _is_ a God, even if He works in mysterious ways, then where does He get off being _this_ mysterious? Where does He get off letting innocent people get slaughtered for no reason? Or letting these people's rest be disturbed, or… Oh, _honestly_. We can't trust that this Anael, if that _is_ her name, is an angel of the Lord if we can't even find adequate evidence in favor of the theory that there _is_ a God. Can anyone in this room give me a satisfactory proof of God's existence? _Anyone_?"  
  
Missouri gives Bela a long, skeptical look, arching an eyebrow until it threatens to leap off her forehead, and finally announces that she isn't touching this train of thought with a ten-foot-pole.  
  
Ava mostly wonders if the Ghostfacers are getting a visit from their dead intern, Corbett or whatever the Hell his name was, right at this very moment—"I mean, that probably wouldn't be too bad? Even if whoever rose these Witness ghosts got them all rabid and made them into attack dogs… Corbett was a sweetheart, and all he'd probably really want is to tell Ed how much he loved him, right? …Think about that: right now, in Middle-of-Nowhere, Texas, there's probably some rabidly enamored ghost running at his old friends, and they're probably taping him for that ridiculous reality show of theirs—and, hey, maybe he can stick around on the show, after that? If maybe he's the Harry Potter of ghosts, so he's too special for the ritual to banish him?"  
  
She's kept her face straight through most of this, but finally, Ava cracks—even she can't let herself get away with how ridiculous she's gotten—she starts off with just a smirk teasing at the corners of her lips, ends up slowly doubling over with laughter, and by the time Bobby and Missouri have found all the details for the ritual, Ava and Bela have both fallen over onto their cots, laughing until their sides hurt—in Bela's case, laughing like Hell had her believe she never would again. Thoroughly unimpressed with losing her seat, Freya's flopped in the middle of a stray devil's trap and started licking herself. The smile that this blatant absurdity puts on Bela's face doesn't last long, for all having Ava and her little idioms put Bela in a better mood. As good as she can be when the Apocalypse is nigh and she's stuck in the middle.  
  
 _That_ lasts until stumbling into the kitchen brings her face-to-face with Henriksen, until his freezing, ghostly hand shoves itself into her chest and twists, forces Bela to her knees on Bobby's linoleum, too wracked with pain to stand but too proud to make more noise than a stray whine—her pulse races, her vision starts to blur, something heavy's bearing down on her chest and she's certain that she's going to die again—then Viktor dissipates. Bela gasps, takes in a deep breath, sees Ava standing over her with one of the iron pokers from the fireplace.  
  
At some wee hour of the morning, Bela wakes up to Freya licking at her face, but once she's carried her baby to the back porch, decided to go back to bed, Bela stumbles to a halt. Yawns and hopes that the image of Anael leaning against the counter is just her imagination—but, just in case it's not, she has get her two cents in:  
  
"So, you were in the bottom of your class in angel school, weren't you, Darling?" she says with a sigh, combing her fingers through her hair and nudging a clump of fringe off to the side, tucking it behind her ear. "Let's not even touch on the part where you saved _me_ instead of someone who might actually help your cause—what sort of servant of God lets her charges get attacked and doesn't lift a feather? Or were you practicing some absenteeism, like your so-called Father? Just let the entire world burn, what do you even care, as long as it's not inconveniencing the angels."  
  
Anael, as it turns out, is not a figment of Bela's imagination. Neither is her fist, or the force with which it hits Bela's jaw. As the stars in her eyes start subsiding, Bela tries to sit up. Finds Anael crouching over her, Anael's hands twisted up in her t-shirt, jerking her up—and with their faces dangerously close together, Anael says, "Our numbers are not unlimited, Bela. Six of my kindred died in the field this week—six angels, murdered in the war against the legions of Hell."  
  
With a huff, she jostles Bela—shoves her away and yanks her back so quickly that it sets Bela's head reeling. "You _are_ special, Bela," she goes on. "You _are_ important; that's why we saved you. But the armies of Heaven do _not_ serve you—I am not some Grigori assigned to perch on your shoulder and be on-call to save you whenever things get hard. The picture here is on a canvas that's bigger than just the Witnesses. When I say that Lilith freeing Lucifer will lead to Hell on Earth? It's _literal_ , and you, of all people, ought to appreciate why we cannot get bogged down in semantics that might keep us from stopping her."  
  
There's a pause in which Bela can hear every beat that her heart skips. Anael tilts her head. Somehow finds more space between them that she can close—for a moment, Bela things Anael might kiss her—her lungs clench up and her stomach does flip-flops at the idea, and they get worse as it dawns on Bela that she might not mind that, actually—on the other hand, maybe she's just tired? But it seems like a capital idea. Staring at Anael's lips, she tongues at her own and wonders if her breath's decent enough for kissing, or if angels even care.  
  
But all Anael does is hiss at her: "You should show me some respect. I dragged you out of Hell and I can throw you back in."  
  
  
On the positive side of things: Anael's in a better mood when she turns up next.  
  
On the substantial negative side, however: she sees absolutely nothing wrong with, for the most part, leaving Bela to her own devices in the seventies. Or with honoring Bela's requests to go back home only once she's learned the truth about Ava—only once she's failed to stop Ava's father from locking lips with Azazel, making a Deal that will end up with Charles Wilson dead and his wife raising Ava on the road, as a hunter. Anael sees nothing wrong with telling Bela that Ava's going down a dark road, and that if Bela can't stop her, the angels will—then disappearing in a rush of fluttering wings. Leaving Bela alone to figure out that not only did Ava know about the demon blood already, but she's known about it since Cold Oak—for almost a year-and-a-half by now.  
  
And not only has Ava been sneaking around behind Bela's back, using her Yellow Eyes-given psychic powers to exorcise demons when everybody says that it's a Bad Goddamn Idea—even Missouri, a psychic herself and thus an authority on the subject, if anyone cares what Bela things—but she's been sneaking around, behind Bela's back, with _Ruby_ —Ruby, the same Ruby, who pretended to know anything about Lilith or getting Bela out of her deal, who probably wants Ava to be her little Antichrist Superstar. And whatever happened during the summer Bela had to call in dead? It was big enough that Ava has no problems with Ruby coming into her personal space, no problems snaking her arms around Ruby's waist, holding Ruby close, and kissing her and getting kissed back like vultures going at carrion.  
  
Just what in the fuck are you supposed to do upon finding out that the girl who is, for all intents and purposes, your sister doesn't trust you? That she looks at everything you've done for her—not least at how you agreed to move up your Deal, let Lilith call it in early and drag your ass to Hell, all her Crossroad Demon needs to do is bring Ava back from the dead—and thinks that you'd honestly kick her out of your life over some issue with demon blood that _isn't her fault_? …Bela has no fucking idea what she's supposed to be doing with this, and she's fallen back on trying to smile and nod through the current job that Bobby's got them handling, trying to flirt with Oktoberfest Jamie because Ava expects that of her—but all it's accomplishing is making Bela wish she could put her fist through a brick wall, or that she could run Ruby through with her own knife.  
  
What the Hell is she supposed to do with _any_ of this? Not to mention everything else—there are the nightmares; there's how nothing takes the edge off of them, and she has them _every single night_ ; there's how liquor helps, kind of, but not enough to take away the feeling like she has ice cubes sliding down the back of her neck twenty-four hours a day, or the memory of talons digging into her flesh, or the moments when someone will chuckle, too low or too throaty or too _something_ , Bela doesn't even know what it is that sets her off, half-the-time, but those chuckles sound like… _No, Darling—let's just stop and put that to bed. It's over with, and he's gone, and we're fine up Topside…_  
  
And, making matters worse, Bela's equally unsure of what to do with the next time Anael decides to insist upon herself. She shows up when Bela needs a break from the case and storms into her and Ava's latest motel room—still fresh off hunting a rugaru (at least in that, yes, it's been two weeks, but Bela's still shaken up by Jack Montgomery and how they couldn't save him); trying to play along with hunting this damned classic Hollywood-obsessed shape-shifter when, really, Bela just wants to stick a silver knife in his heart and move on; and decidedly disinterested in whether or not she's a virgin, now that her body's been reconstructed, and in whether or not Ava wants her to hook up with Jamie—  
  
And right when Bela's not in the mood for anything else to get dumped on her shoulders, she happens to find an angel sitting on her bed, staring up at her with her eyes all wide and innocent, saying that she doesn't have any task for Bela or a Heavenly assignment kicking around in her back pocket. She simply felt they parted on undesirable terms and wanted to see how Bela's doing, to make sure that the lines of communication are still open, still mostly clear.  
  
Well, good for Anael, but Bela doesn't care. She shuts the door, and huffs into the bathroom to start taking off her makeup, and she _doesn't care_.  
  
"You say that rather often," Anael comments with a sigh, still sitting on the bed, like she's been banished there or stuck in time-out. "I can't help wondering why you insist on it so much, if it's true. The extra effort that you put into this seems counterintuitive. Not entirely unlike how you've handled the revelations about Ava, so far…"  
  
"What goes on between me and my sister is none of your business," Bela calls out at Anael, attacking her own face with the cold cream and the washcloth. _Just focus on getting this off your face. Don't look at the angel. Don't acknowledge the angel. Maybe she'll get the hint and leave._  
  
"One of my orders is to make sure that you're aware of your duties when they're relevant, and that you can fulfill them," Anael says and it sounds… like she's talking out her ass. Like she's legitimately throwing out her stream-of-consciousness thoughts, however those work for angels. "Your welfare is important to my task. Your welfare has much to do with how you and your sister are getting along. I would say that makes your current feud with Ava my business."  
  
"We aren't feuding, Anael—we just aren't discussing the issue of Ava lying to me, or her demon girlfriend, or any of it. It isn't important, thus? We aren't wasting time on it."  
  
"I don't think that you believe that. More importantly… did neither of you learn anything from Jack?" (At this, Bela actually glances over, and right on time to see Anael lingering, leaning on the doorframe, watching Bela as though she might bite.) "There were several lessons in his story that I think the two of you could benefit from internalizing—or considering more seriously, at the very least."  
  
"Duly noted, Angel. I'll see to it that we don't set ourselves on fire." Trying not to focus on Anael means focusing on the mirror—and the angel has to go and chuckle—she doesn't even sound that much like _him_ , but in a flash, everything comes rushing back, the darkness in the Pit and the fire, the stench of sulfur, the claws inside of her, like icicles digging at her soul and her flesh, and the white eyes lingering above her, always watching her—  
  
Anael's hand falls to her shoulder—even through Bela's blazer and the long sleeves of her shirt, Anael finds the handprint, squeezes it, and instead of the cold, Bela's flooded over with warmth. Not just warmth, but… calm. Waves of it, coming from somewhere far off, strange and familiar at the same time—the word _grace_ flashes through her mind even though Bela can't explain why—and when they finally recede, leave her feeling the sort of languid that comes after a long, hot shower, Bela feels invulnerable. Only temporarily, she knows that—but she can't hear _him_ cackling in her ears, can't feel anything like Hell working at her nerves.  
  
"If you're not going to talk to Ava about what she's gone through, what she's done with Ruby…" Anael sighs, squeezes Bela's shoulder again. "Then at least you should talk to her about Hell. For yourself, if not for her."


End file.
